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One of the most serious complications of diabetes is kidney disease. British researchers have discovered that eating fish twice a week might help diabetes patients prevent kidney problems, according to a study published in the November edition of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, the official journal of the National Kidney Foundation.

The study traced the records of more than 22,300 middle-aged and older English men and women who were part of a large European cancer study. The participants were asked about their diet habits and had their urine samples analyzed for the presence of a protein called albumin, which is an indicator of kidney damage.Continue Reading »

Probably the most morally debated, contested and picketed against medical practice of the last two centuries physician assisted suicide is again under close scrutiny. The practice has been legal in the Netherlands for 6 years (since 2002). For 20 years before it was codified, there was a silent agreement that doctors who performed the suicide in specific cases were not to be prosecuted. In the United States, euthanasia has been legal in the state of Oregon for 11 years now.

(Ivanhoe Newswire) — New research reveals there may be a significant link between depression during pregnancy and preterm delivery.

Preterm delivery (delivery at less than 37 weeks gestation) is the leading cause of infant mortality and morbidity. It’s also the leading reason behind medical expenditure for infants with estimated annual cost of $26 billion in the U.S. alone.

According to researchers at Kaiser Permanente, depressed pregnant women have twice the risk of preterm delivery than pregnant women with no signs of depression. During the study, which was among the first to examine the depression-preterm delivery link, researchers also found the risk grows with the severity of the depressive symptoms.

After 18 months of treatment, patients taking high doses of vitamins B6 and B12 as well as folic acid showed the same degree of cognitive decline compared with baseline as those assigned to placebo, reported Paul Aisen, M.D., of the University of California San Diego, and colleagues in the Oct. 15 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Those women with severe symptoms had almost twice the risk of an early birth, defined as before 37 weeks’ gestation. Those with significant symptoms had a 60 percent risk of early birth, the study found.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women with depression symptoms early in pregnancy may be at heightened risk of delivering prematurely, a study published Thursday suggests.

Researchers found that among 791 pregnant women they followed, those who were suffering from significant depression symptoms around the 10th week of pregnancy were twice as likely as non-depressed women to give birth too early.

What’s more, the risk of preterm delivery rose in tandem with the severity of early-pregnancy depression — supporting a direct relationship between the two.

- Forget pickles and ice cream. What do pregnant women really need to take the edge off? Brahms and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Music may reduce the stress, anxiety, and depression that many pregnant women experience. A study of 236 pregnant women in Taiwan shows that the participants who listened to music for 30 minutes per day for two weeks significantly reduced their stress, anxiety, and depression, compared with participants who did not. The study, conducted by researchers at the College of Nursing at Kaohsiung Medical University, was published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.

Brain cells can adopt a new chemical code in response to cues from the outside world, scientists working with tadpoles at the University of California, San Diego report in the journal Nature this week.

The discovery opens the possibility that brain chemistry could be selectively altered by stimulating specific circuits to remedy low levels of neural chemicals that underlie some human ailments.

Dark tadpoles don pale camouflage when exposed to bright light. The researchers have now identified cells in the tadpole brain that respond to illumination by making dopamine, a chemical message, or neurotransmitter, recognized by the system that controls pigmentation.

Though the suicide rate dropped between 1986 and 1999, the number of suicides for white women age 40 to 64 rose 3.9 percent annually between 1999 and 2005 and the suicide rate for white, middle-aged men climbed 2,7 percent yearly during the same interval, meaning that the number of suicides among Americans still remains disturbingly high.

A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that while suicide rates increased by 2 to 3% in white men and women, the rates remained the same in Asians and Native Americans and declined in blacks. Suicide rates among African-Americans declined by more than 1 percent yearly. Before 1999, white middle-aged men were at least likely to commit suicide. Between 1999 and 2005, the suicide rate among white middle-aged men jumped 33 percent, from 7,916 deaths in 1999 to 10,535 in 2005.